The article presents the opportunities and tasks now facing researchers into the history of the Polish language. It contends that closed language subsystems, such phonological, infl ectional, syntactic subsystems, such as are studied from the start of Polish scientifi c linguistics, are suffi ciently developed and known, and little can be added to their description, except for particulars. The greatest opportunities and tasks now face researchers into open subsystems such as vocabulary, phraseology, and historical stylistics. The author devotes the most attention to research opportunities and tasks in the history of the Polish lexicon, the fi eld in which he has long been engaged. Broad research opportunities in this area are offered by existing historical dictionaries of Polish and many published, comprehensive sources from past centuries, like inventories of royal and manorial estates. Such non-literary texts should continue to be published, with many still to be found in archives. They contain a wealth of interesting vocabulary in material culture. Studies and descriptions of such vocabulary should aim at developing a synthetic history of Polish vocabulary.
The present text investigates the history of Polish legal vocabulary. The starting point, for the third time, is the state attested in Bartłomiej Groicki’s (1519–1605) Słowa prawne w rzeczy sobie podobne. This time, the field of document names is examined and discussed against a wide temporal background. The field is characterized by rich synonymy as it evolved constantly, together with the development of secretarial work, and absorbed ever new lexical units, mostly from Latin which for very long was the language of legal literature and offices in Poland. The structure of the field is complex: apart from the hyperonymic level – which constitutes the common denominator for all of the componenets of the field (e.g. dokument ‘document’, list ‘letter’), four subfields can be distinguished: the subfield of names of copies (e.g. ekstrakt ‘extract’, kopia ‘copy’, wypis ‘excerpt’), names of lists (e.g. inwentarz ‘inventory’, rejestr ‘register’), names of receipts (cyrograf ‘bond’, kwit ‘receipt’), names of documents authorizing security (glejt, pasbrif ‘safe conduct’), and finally various semantically isolated names (kontrakt ‘contract’, testament ‘will’). The names dowód ‘argument’ and świadectwo ‘testimony’ summarize the entire field.
Starting with B. Groicki’s Słowa prawne w rzeczy sobie podobne (1567), the paper collects and discusses lexis in the field of legal and judicial procedure. First, the history of the field procedura ‘procedure’ is briefly presented from Old Polish to modern times, and then the history of the field dilatio (‘adjorunment’) is discussed in more detail. In the Old Polish period, the most common names in the field dilatio were odwłoka, fryszt, odkład, and also several deverbal derivatives in -anie, -enie (e.g. odkładanie, odwleczenie, przewleczenie), which were however rarely written down in the sources. In the 16th c., this type becomes relatively popular, but the frequency of specific names is also very low at that time; the names odwłoka, przewłoka and zwłoka are much more common. From the second half of the 16th till the end of the 18th c., the centre of the field is dominated by dilatio, a loan word from Latin. In mid-18th c. the name odroczenie appears as an innovation, rare at first but gradually ousting the foreign dylacja and beginning to reign supreme.
The article presents lexicological reflections on the vocabulary of the writings of Bartłomiej Groicki (1519– 1605). The starting point is the state observed in Słowa prawne w rzeczy sobie podobne, which was a kind of glossary attached to the same author’s Rejestr do Porządku i do Artykułów prawa majdeburskiego (1567). A wide perspective is given on the historical development of the following semantic fields: 1. Names of women; 2. Names of the degrees of kinship and affinity; 3. Names of disputes and litigations; 4. Names of inheritances; 5. Names of prison. The author’s considerations and conclusions are illustrated with rich material excerpted from historical sources.
JavaScript is turned off in your web browser. Turn it on to take full advantage of this site, then refresh the page.